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Sheikh Khalid Bin Abdul Rehman Al-Hussainan, aka Abu-Zaid al Kuwaiti, was reportedly killed in a drone strike while eating breakfast in Pakistan.
A senior al-Qaida official and potential successor to the group’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed Friday morning in a Predator drone strike, according to reports on jihadi web forums and U.S. officials.
Sheikh Khalid Bin Abdul Rehman Al-Hussainan, aka Abu-Zaid al Kuwaiti, was killed in Pakistan while eating breakfast, according to the accounts. The 46-year-old cleric was seen as part of the “very top tier" of al-Qaida's remaining leaders in the wake of the death of Osama bin Laden, according to one expert on the terror group.
The news was first announced on an al-Qaida web forum early Friday. “We celebrate to you the news of the martyrdom of the working scholar Shaykh Khalid al-Hussainan (Abu Zaid al-Kuwaiti) while eating his Suhoor (dawn time) meal, and we ask Allah to accept him in paradise," a post said.
Evan Kohlmann, an NBC News counterterrorism analyst, said al-Hussainan was at the forefront of a new wave of al-Qaida leadership.
“That's a big gap in the leadership,” said Kohlmann, who is also a Justice Department consultant. “He was the last senior Al-Qaida leader in the Afghanistan-Pakistan area who was, one, from the Arabian Peninsula and, two, who had serious clerical credentials. Now there is no obvious publicly recognizable candidate left to succeed Zawahiri.”
In recent years, al-Hussainan was seen in numerous al-Qaida videos offering religious training to the group’s operatives. The videos were widely circulated by al-Shabab, al-Qaida’s media wing. He also authored several books of religious thoughts.
The U.S. killed three other up-and-coming members of the terror group’s next generation leadership in the months after bin Laden was killed in a raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, by U.S. Navy SEALs in May 2011. Ilyas Kashmiri, the leader of a Pakistani group associated with al-Qaeda was killed June 3. Atiyah Abd-al Rahman, bin Laden’s chief of staff, was killed on Aug. 22 and Ayman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen who was a leader of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, was killed Sept. 30. US officials say that hints about their whereabouts were found in materials gathered by the Navy SEALs in the raid on bin Laden’s compound.
Al-Hussainan is the highest ranking al-Qaida official to be killed since those leaders were killed.
Mike Leiter, the former director of the National Counter Terrorism Center and an NBC News analyst, said it’s important to keep going after top officials to keep al-Qaida off balance.
“We are taking out the generation following those left from the 9-11 era leadership,” Leiter said. “If you can get into this level of leadership consistently, it becomes very difficult for al-Qaida in Pakistan to become a serious threat to the homeland.”
The fact that the attack was carried out by a Predator shows that the US intends to keep using the drones to kill al-Qaida, despite criticism from Pakistani officials and U.S. critics, said Roger Cressey, former deputy director of the White House counter terrorism center and an NBC News analyst.
“Anyone who believes that the drone program has run its course needs to know that people like al Kuwaiti are still out there,” he said.
Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News.
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Does anyone know for sure that people are dead...?? Just because Obama says it.....doesn't make it true...!! Bin Laden is probably in Boston Mass. with his brother watching T.V. Everyone with some kind of brain knows that Obama is a lair and a fraud.....!!!
You are right Obama is a liar and a fraud.It's pretty obvious you don't belong in the SHEEPLE category unlike the largest majority of Americans by far.
Everyone with some kind of brain knows that Obama is a lair and a fraud.
Clearly, you are not among them...
Tex2c you are misinformed about me, i am not a Obama supporter,i didn't vote for Romney either,both are globalist puppets controlled by the elite bankers that are destroying America.Only a clueless moron that cant think for themselves and do there own independent research would believe that 1 party is better than the other.It's so sad how dumb down and ignorant society has become.
Speaking of dumb and ignorant, DemoCRIP, if you didn't vote, you aren't participating in our democracy, you're just being swept along (kind of like a sheep moving with the herd) passively.
I love how you whackadoos always manage to work some gloat into your posts about how intelligent you are and how the rest of us are dumb, ignorant, misinformed, clueless, morons that can't think for themselves, puppets, etc, etc, ad nauseum.
If you're such an elevated, enlightened genius, run for public office. Take the chance to make a change. Use your towering IQ to improve our country and the plight of your fellow man.
Oh, but wait, that would require you to move out of your gramma's basement, huh, and be revealed for the pasty, bloated, acne-ridden, 38-year-old virgin that I suspect you are.
Go ask Gramma if she'll fetch you some more Mickey D's. Try not to spill your supersize Coke on the keyboard. And rock on, citizen.
Excuse but i am not dumb and ignorant.People who vote for the 2 party dictatorship deserve be slaves to the system.I don't vote for evil,don't give me that lessor of 2 evils crap that you have to pick a side.Another thing i don't live in my mothers basement,i live by myself,i don't drink soda either,because its very bad for your brain,it has high fructose corn syrup in it.When a real presidential candidate comes along that's not not controlled by the bankers and stand for freedom and liberty for the masses of people i will vote,but in the mean time i will not vote for the 2 gangs that are into criminal activity.
They're after me Lucky Charms!!
Oh well, ... pass the salt ...
Let slip the hellfire missiles of war and cry havoc! Good job CIA, keep it up! BTW, I get a lot chuckles when I read anti Obama concerning this subject, keep it up fellas, it doesn't matter who is the president atm, the same targeting of these extremists would be the same.
Jeez, yeah, I wasted some time and read too some previous posts. There is one poster named DemoCrips...this fella reminds me of the Unibomber.
I am not a Unibomber i am a truth seeker that believes in freedom and justice for all people.Just because i believe in freedom and getting the big evil government out of the way doesn't make me a radical.Anybody that is anti freedom for the masses are radicals and dictators.It's easy for somebody like you to except lies than except the truth,because you been recondition by the government public schools to believe that government is honest and cant do you wrong.
DemoCRIPS&ReBLOODlicans:
I am not a Unibomber
Could have fooled us! Kinda reminds folks with a memory that goes back over 5 minutes of that hero of right wing fanatics, Nixon, when he told us, 'I AM NOT A CROOK!'
So tell us, when did you stop being a Unibomber?
I never was a Unibomber,i am just a guy that wants my freedoms and liberties back from the big evil government that is controlled by the foreign bankers that are destroying America and peeing all over the United States Constitution.There's nothing crazy about wanting your freedoms restored.This is not a Democrat or Republican issue both parties are controlled by the banker elite and the multinational corporations,both are a accessory to the crime.
Bull, you are one sick puppy, and our big evil govt is not out to get you. Get some help slick, before you go postal on someone.
I am not sick your the 1 that's a sick puppy,because you cant handle the factual truth.That's your right if you want to be in denial and believe that government would never hurt you or take away your freedoms and make you a slave to the system.People like you that are anti freedom deserve to be a slave to system.Enjoy your police state and drones flying over you everywhere you go.Next thing the government will be trying to put cameras in your home,so enjoy.
Demo, what you have lost contact with is the background relativity of the politics that control your thinking. As a result of the advances made in technology by civilized culture, you have more freedom than any current or previous folks in history.
What you have become sucked into is a vision promoted by the extreme right wing profiteers like the Koch Bros. They created the Tea Party to go to the streets to demand less government (read let them do anything they want to make profit, even if everyone else gets screwed).
This same strategy was foisted on the American political scene in the 1950's by Big Oil interests when they funded the John Birch Society and the McCarthy witch-hunt. That deceptive attempt to convince the American people that their interests were better met as long as Big Oil got total control of the US Congress almost worked and we are still living with the damage done by them. Neo-con political philosophy is a direct result and look where GW Bush and his creepy gang led us.
Need I remind you that there are a lot more folks living on this finite world today than ever before? If there were only 7,000 people living on this planet, rational, democratic, centralized decisions by all of us would not be nearly as required as when there are 7,000,000,000.
My advice is that your understanding of the issues would be better served if you look at the bigger picture and leave the selfish, me-me-me thinking behind.
They're after me Lucky Charms!
We need to get desperate. For years I hear key leader killed, yet there is always another key leader taking over. We must have ran out of Nukes. Nuke that place, a guaranteed way to rid all key leader present & future.
You guys been watching to many James Bond movies. Real life is way simpler. The new generation FBI, CIA,SF & all those super suspicious organizations had no choice but to recruit new members out of a young "hollywood wanna be" video game generation. These youngster" qualify" but are the weakest members since excistence. They crack under little pressure. I real life...it is costing them their lives.
Nice to see he died wearing his Burberry headscarf. I'm sure he traded a couple of old wives for it.
RoadRAID!
Well, what was he eating? These guys never give you the whole story.
@Niki, he was having bacon and eggs (over easy), hashbrowns, and toast. He didn't even get a chance to have any potatoes before he got his final 72 grains of white rice. Oh well, another camel humper gone, another to pop up soon. Idiots never learn not to become the leader or next leader. Weeeeeeeeeeeeee
The slain leader was quoted from paradise saying, "When are these guys with pointy tails and pitchforks going to turn down the heat and bring me to the virgins already?"
Everytime I read an article like this about a successful drone strike taking out one of these a$$holes, it totally makes my day. Kudos to the servicemen and women who make this happen.
Ya gotta love those Predators! Sweet kill, for sure. And didn't that dude look a lot like an orangutan? Smoked monkey meat, lol!
Great, a big Mac attack,hope he said Grace...........
Another pne bites the dust
Glad he is dead, sadly probably took out several women and children in the process. We need a foreign policy change called (Mind Our Own Fuc$ing Business)
This man may have been killed by a drone, but this whole message thread was killed by trolls.
How many "senior al Queda leaders are there? It's like an infestation!
SCRAMBLED EGGS! Great American Dish!
I think I stole a box of lucky charms from that guy when I was a kid.
Any one notice they are not called the "#2 man" any longer? Probably because "#2 man " gets "droned" quite a lot?
Damn, we need more drones, not less. Who is the next one to step up?
Civilised people everywhere rejoice at the passing!!! ... and another one bites the dust !
Civilised people rejoice at the death of others? How very un-civilised of them
BFD. Just like when any mob boss gets killed, there will be two dozen wannabees fighting over who gets the job.